Next month, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is scheduled to present its National Broadband Plan to Congress and the stakes could not be higher. Broadband opens doors that allow for extraordinary opportunity — opportunity that should be available to all Americans at an affordable price.

As we anxiously await the details, our society prepares to undergo tremendous structural changes in how vital government services are delivered. These services are a lifeline, particularly for our underclass. America’s low-income communities cannot afford to be further disadvantaged as a result of a lack of the benefits that the digital future promises (education, entertainment, healthcare) due to the rising price of Broadband.

I share the FCC’s commitment to equal rights for Internet users, but I am genuinely concerned about the unintended consequences that well-intentioned net neutrality policies could have on America’s underclass. For many families, the brutal recession that we continue to battle has already pushed the dream of high-speed Internet access out of reach. Implementing new network neutrality regulations that may not allocate costs in a fair or equitable manner, particularly in these times of economic uncertainty, is of serious concern.

Assuming that we all agree with President Obama on the importance of universal broadband in our society, the required cost to achieve such must be considered. There are many technologies available to wire the country: cable, fiber optic, wireless, satellite, but without the necessary infrastructure in place, we can’t get wire to everyone. From the desperately poor in our inner cities (places like South Central or Detroit) to the isolated poor and rural locations like the Ozarks, hundreds of billions of dollars in new investment are needed to change the status of our un-served and underserved Americans.

More than $100 billion has already been spent to deploy high-speed systems across America. But the FCC has estimated that $350 billion is necessary to achieve universal broadband access. As such, the focus of the FCC should be on speeding this process, either through federal programs or by incentivizing the investment of private companies.

Throughout this process, we must also strive to ensure that access remains affordable. To achieve this, I see one logical solution — to have the build-out in these communities financed in part by agreements between the companies paying to lay the wires and the companies that will use those links to sell services.

Largely missing the point, proposals for new “neutrality” rules do nothing to help us realize these important goals. Instead, it is widely thought that new net neutrality regulations will reduce much needed investment in infrastructure, thus causing broadband to become less affordable and accessible to underserved and un-served populations.

Others who have come to the same conclusion include Democratic Governors Beverly Perdue of North Carolina and Mike Beebe of Arkansas. Beebe, whose state includes large numbers of desperately poor in both rural and urban areas, wrote to the FCC last October to express concern that Net neutrality rules would hurt his efforts to expand high-speed service in Arkansas.

When Oklahoma’s Democratic Governor Brad Henry spoke out on this issue he encouraged the FCC to look at what he’s done as Governor. As he put it, the best way to wire Oklahoma is through its model of “light or no regulation for landline, broadband and wireless services.”

Additionally, certain members of the Congressional Black Caucus recently called on the FCC to reiterate, not repudiate, its historic commitment to the principles that have fostered an Internet open to all: competition, private investment and a restrained regulatory approach.

As the FCC considers President Obama’s charge to create universal broadband access, it is important to remember that deploying the access is only part of the solution. Making this access affordable is equally important.

For all Americans, the stakes are high. For our minority and low-income communities, the stakes are even higher. If federal policy remains focused on encouraging broadband roll-out and allowing financing arrangements that make access more affordable, the possibilities will be limitless. That’s a dream we all share.

Follow Julius H. Hollis on Twitter: www.twitter.com/digitalequality

The California Assembly is taking steps to protect photographers and public figures whose images are used without consent online.  AB 632, introduced by Assembly Member Davis, would require a social networking site to prevent an image of a person that is posted on the site from being copied or reproduced by another person without the permission of the user who posted the image.  In a further measure to protect unauthorized reproduction of a person’s image; social networking websites would be required to create a mechanism for users to flag images for removal of images of that user that are posted without their authorization.

This bill may allow Californians to sleep a little better at night knowing that their Facebook profile images cannot be arbitrarily copied and used on a porn site.

Although, like so many well meaning pieces of legislation, the enforcement of something like this may be next to impossible.  Further, does this type of legislation even make sense?  I post my images online “at my own risk”, I would much prefer that someone not steal and misrepresent my image; however, if such an event occured I may have a cause of action under libel (depending on the state’s laws). Perhaps states should focus on strengthening their defamation laws in order to provide protection to citizens against digital gaffes.

Beyond misrepresentation of someone else’s image, the bill also addresses taking images that another person created.  I admire creative and beautiful photography and know that it takes talent and equipment to produce certain images.  Is it fair for me to cut and paste the image onto my site without compensating the photographer?  On the flip side if a photographer posts their work online, is it considered a published work and part of the community’s domain?  What about First Amendment free speech rights; should a celebrity be able to sue a website because an unattractive, unauthorized picture of the celebrity is posted?  Better yet what if the situation involved a politiciann?

Finally, I understand that state legislatures pass bills concerning Internet use to protect their citizens; however, isn’t this a federal issue?  How can a state police websites like Facebook?  Especially when social networking site users can only use the service if they agree to terms of service and opt into the service?  California is requiring Facebook and other social networking sites to develop specific technology to meet the requirements of one state.  I argue that Internet laws should be the exclusive domain of federal policy making under the Commerce Clause or Necessary and Proper Clause.  Internet users and businesses require uniform federal laws that govern how we use websites and exchange information over the Internet.

Currently AB 632 passed the Assembly Floor and Senate Committee and will presumably be brought to the Senate Floor for a full vote.  What are your thoughts on policing the Internet?  Does this type of law protect or suffocate creativity?

Almost half of the 1,015 advertisers polled said that Twitter use will grow exponentially over the next few years, compared with just 12% of consumers who felt the same. One-fifth of…….advertisers and 12% of consumers say Twitter is just something for young people, which contradicts a much-publicized report by a Morgan Stanley intern arguing the opposite. If McCain and his 150 fellow Congressional Twitterers, according to Tweet Congress, are any indication of the website’s audience, it’s not a young person’s game. -via Is Congress the ultimate ad agency with Twitter? | Top of the Ticket | Los Angeles Times.

Recently we had a conversation with Nancy Tarr, whom we hope will play a major role within#NMP, about this phenomenon. The very people who will have to decide on important legislation in the coming future regarding this space are still trying to understand how to use social media. The simple fact is, Congress (members and staff) are in this torrid love hate relationship with the reality that Twitter, YouTube, live streaming from your mobile device, is making the world and policy making more accessible and transparent.

The major question is: Do we want Congress to be an ad agency for new media?

You can see why politicians would love social media as it provides an affordable way to directly communicate with constituents (and voters) as well as hate lack of message control. The concern we have here at #NMP is that policy makers who will be crafting policy and legislation that effect new media usage barely understand how to use this technology and will be influenced by their own skewed experiences and investors in the technology; not those who are avid consumers, producers, and disseminators of new media content.

We can not let the weary concerned politicians, the ambivalent Congressional staffers, or the venture capital firms who want to protect their investments have a solitary voice over the rights of the social media community.

We must continue to drive this conversation from the consumers’ point of view.  Lend your voice and opinions to this blog…what are your concerns?  How do you view regulations that will affect how we use new media?

In Associated Press v. All Headline News Corp., AP brought a copyright infringement suit against All Headline News Corp., a website that redistributes news articles.  AP alleged AHN was redistributing AP articles in their entirety and passing them off as AHN articles.  In addition to copyright infringement, the AP brought a number of other claims, including misappropriation under the “hot news” doctrine, a New York common law doctrine.  The Supreme Court of the United States upheld the “hot news” doctrine in the famous 1918 case International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215 (1918).

On face, this case may appear to simply be a copyright infringement issue…after all we are all taught in grade school that copying another person’s work and passing it off as your own is wrong (in college we find out its illegal).  The impact of this case’s outcome is that IP rights will either be assigned to AP’s reporting when in digital format or they will not.  Digital format can mean any online content distribution from the daily blogger to large websites like AHN.  This does NOT mean that the content can no longer be placed online by third parties, but under AP’s official policy, everyone from bloggers (like me) to Drudge himself will need permission from AP before posting their content.  Permission usually also means that the person posting content must pay AP for the content.

Those of us in the news industry know that AP does not usually enforce their “official policy” but they do require that AP receives credit/acknowledgement when their articles are posted by third parties.

So now that we understand how a case like this can impact our use and consumption of online materials…how was the case decided?  It settled!  However, before the parties settled, the court found in favor of AP on AHN’s motion to dismiss stating that AP had a claim under the “hot news” doctrine following the Second Circuit’s holding in National Basketball Ass’n v. Motorola, Inc., 105 F.3d 841 (2d Cir. 1997), that a valid claim for misappropriation under the “hot news doctrine” lies where a plaintiff pleads the following: 

(i) a plaintiff generates or gathers information at a cost;

(ii) the information is time-sensitive;

(iii) a defendant’s use of the information constitutes free riding on the plaintiff’s efforts;

(iv) the defendant is in direct competition with a product or service offered by the plaintiffs; and

(v) the ability of other parties to free-ride on the efforts of the plaintiff or others would so reduce the incentive to produce the product or service that its existence or quality would be substantially threatened.

So what…no court decision means no precedence, right?  WRONG, this case demonstrates that a New York District court will allow news creators, like AP to bring claims under the “hot news” doctrine; that the District Courts of New York believe that this doctrine CAN be applied to digital news; and that AP can and will go after those they consider “plagerisers” of their content using this doctrine as their sword.

So where does this leave us?  In 1918 AP argued that their content should be protected under IP laws because investigative journalism is expensive, there are large upfront costs to sending journalists all over the world to collect information and report stories.  If those stories can be taken by any media outlet and distributed without compensating AP, then there is no incentive for AP to invest in investigative journalism, society does not receive the benefits of global news.

On the flip side, are policies like this even enforceable?  How can AP really police every blog site, news site, newspapers, ect.?  Truth is that they cannot, which leaves them with an IP right that not even the organization can enforce.  Further, do policies like this hamper our abilities on the semantic web to talk about and distribute news?  Will the information debate become as confounded as the digital music debate?

Personally I think that AHN was wrong to take AP’s stories verbatim and pass them off as their own, AP deserved the credit for those stories, even though they were posted on AHN’s site.  However, I would not like to see AP become extremely closed with their information and overly enforce their reporting by not allowing anyone to site or use their articles without express permission from AP.  AP could very well decide that the only way we can get their news is to go to their website. Do we then get into antitrust issues?

Its all extremely complicated and affects our daily lives.  One case (that settled) out of New York could change the way we consume news online.  This is why it is so important to understand policies being created from our legislatures, courts, and Congress in regards to social media and the Internet.

What are your thoughts on this case and how we consume digital news?

pq74h8gv59

My first thought upon hearing this was, “I thought we learned our lesson with intelligent agency communication failures?” According to Norman Ornstein at Roll Call there are serious turf wars in our government, which contributes to inefficiency and poor policy making. So how do we solve difficulties in finding and sharing information?

Enter, the age of social media and “pedias.”

Intellipedia, the first government “pedia” was introduced in 2004 by a CIA analyst. Intellipedia is a proprietary, Wikipedia-like system set up to enable 16 separate intelligence-related agencies, from the CIA to the FBI, the National Security Agency and various entities in the Department of Defense, to share information, data, theories, insights and ideas in an interactive fashion, and to edit the entries that are put onto the network. There are now tens of thousands of articles on Intellipedia, with hundreds added every week.

Intellipedia is shear brilliance, this simple tool is connecting people across agencies, which would most likely never meet, and allows them to share information vital to our national security. For example, data uncovered by one analyst may be shot down by another, reducing the likelihood of dry holes or actions taken on the basis of faulty intelligence.

For Congress a “pedia” can be created for legislation and be a place where staffers and Members can share policy information.

In lieu of merging agencies and commissions, “pedias” can be created as a medium for information exchange. Social media is allowing staffers, analysts, committee persons, and citizens to participate in policy making. This is not only smart government but good democracy.

In a world of instant communication, we cannot afford for our government to fall behind. Information is everywhere, social media helps us find and utilize the right information. More importantly social media allows us to carry on conversations about security and policy involving any subject matter.

We would love your feedback on the idea of connecting Capitol Hill through social media tools. Does centralizing information through “pedias” work or create more headaches?

For many, broadband may be as familiar a technology as cable television. Others may not be aware of the advantages high-speed Internet service offers. It can place adults in a virtual classroom and allow them to get a college or graduate degree — from their own homes. It gives physicians and hospitals instant access to medical records and enables remote diagnostic medicine, which can help enhance healthcare delivery in rural areas. It can allow a rancher in West Texas to sell every head of cattle in an online auction, expanding the reach of his business and raising his earning potential without the need to leave his ranch.  (Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, via TheHill.com – Bringing broadband to rural America.)

Such policies allow small business growth in rural America, but also increased use of social media solutions.

The new task force, chaired by June M. Besek, section council member and executive director of the Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts at Columbia Law School, will focus on proposals to change existing copyright laws and to create new domestic and international mechanisms to enhance compliance with copyright and other intellectual property law norms.

Following the model of the section’s Patent Law Reform Task Force established two years ago to respond to the ever-changing landscape in patent reform legislation, the Copyright Law Reform Task Force selected its members from the leadership of the section’s key copyright committees, copyright experts from academia and the section’s senior management.

The Copyright Law Task Force forms at a critical time in Congress. Both the House and the Senate Judiciary Committees are now addressing copyright matters after postponing consideration of those concerns to concentrate on patent law reform during the first 16 months of the 110th Congress.

via Copyright Issues Top Congressional Agenda for New ABA Task Force – News Release.

Facebook has hired an ex-Liberal Democrat MP to lobby the European Union on the company’s behalf.

Facebook also announced a similar role in Washington for Timothy Sparapani, a former lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union.

“This sets off alarms with cultures concerned about privacy, as well as governmental agencies and task forces,” he added. “Expect privacy, and ownership over user data to be one of the top debated topics in the next few coming years.”

via Facebook hires EU lobbyist | IT PRO.

via FT.com | Tech Blog | Does tech pay enough tax?.